This monumental book is the single biggest and most important major work in
print on the subject of gays in the military. (Okay, there is my own “Do Ask,
Do Tell.” – in that book and on this website I have carried the story forward
to present day.)It is organized in
“books” covering historical periods, and these in turn comprise short
anecdotes about various gay servicemembers who had
to deal with the ban. Along the way, Shilts covers
the gradual legal evolution of the policy up until the 1993 debate started by
President Clinton (the revised paperback covers the debate rather briefly),
particularly the evolution of the “Old Policy: or absolute ban
(“homosexuality is incompatible with military service….”) at the beginning of
the Reagan administration in 1981, where the services offered honorable
discharges but maintained a supposedly uniform policy of asking [technically
not actually required in the 1981 regsbut done by all the services] and
discharging anyone found to be “homosexual.”Shilts compares the ban to Nazi Germany’s
prosecution of homosexual “thought crimes.”

Some of the best incidents are early ones, such as those during the
Vietnam era, where Shilts discusses the issue of
homosexuality and the draft and presents a story of a student expelled from
college for homosexuality in 1965 (as I was expelled in 1961, as described in
my own book). Shilts frames his story with that of
gay Navy doctor Tom Dooley. He presents various other stories of gay
“superstars” who served in the military, sometimes in clandestine services,
only to be expelled later. I wonder if the current war on terrorism will
write the final chapter of this problem.I think that somehow it will.

Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network (SLDN) starts many of its own annual reports
with the phrase “Conduct Unbecoming.”

Around 1995 there was talk that HBO might make a cable series based on
this book, but so far this has not happened.But maybe….

This was the study, funded by Les Aspin in the
Clinton Administration in 1993, to recommend a way to lift the ban against
gays in the military. I have covered this manual in some detail in my first
book. There are many detailed sociology studies and tables, and analyses of
foreign militaries, especially Israel.There are concepts like “propinquity” that
help establish social loyalties in the military and elsewhere. The book
finally comes up with a proposed “Code of military professional conduct” that
could be implemented with a lifting of the ban. It was not believed.